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The PracTeX Journal - TeX Users Group Journal home page General information Submit an item Download style files Copyright Contact us Issue Table of Contents 2006, Number 3 [Published 2006-08-15] Notices From the Editor: In this issue Dave Walden Feedback From the Readers Report on PracTeX06 From the Participants and Compiled by Dave Walden Whole Issue PDF for PracTeX Journal 2006-3 The Editors Articles Productivity with macros and packages Will Robertson Replacing LaTeX2e standard classes with KOMA-Script Yuri Robbers, Markus Kohm and Rasmus Pank Roulund The memoir class Peter Wilson LaTeX curricula vitae with the CurVe class Didier Verna ConTeXt Starters Joe Hogg Creating Pocket-size Books Using LaTeX D.V.L.K.D.P. Venugopal Columns http://dw.tug.org/pracjourn/2006-3/ (1 of 2)8/19/2006 6:09:52 AM The PracTeX Journal - TeX Users Group Travels in TeX Land: Experiences Refining Page Layout for a Book David Walden Book Review: Formatting Information -- A beginner's introduction to typesetting with LaTeX by Peter Flynn D.V.L.K.D.P. Venugopal Ask Nelly: What are the differences among MiKTeX, ProTeXt, and LaTeX? How do I add change bars? The Editors Distractions: LaTeX Wordplay — 3 crosswords; math font quiz answers The Editors http://dw.tug.org/pracjourn/2006-3/ (2 of 2)8/19/2006 6:09:52 AM The PracTeX Journal - TeX Users Group Journal home page General information Submit an item Download style files Copyright Contact us From the Editor: In this issue Dave Walden ● Comment on this paper ● Send submission idea to editor Hello, My name is Dave Walden, and I am the guest editor of this issue of The PracTeX Journal (TPJ). I am on the Editorial Board of the journal, but until now I have worked in the journal's back room maintaining the journal's web pages. In this issue I was hoping that this issue would have a theme of "using TeX to improve productivity and using TeX more productively," and two or three pieces in the issue are explicitly on that topic (for instance, pracjourn/2006-3/ robertson/). However, as I look at the whole collection of papers and columns in this issue, I realize that a key to both TeX's productivity and using it productively is its flexibility. In fact, flexibility may be the underlying theme of every issue of TPJ and may help distinguish TeX from standard word processing systems and other typesetting systems -- TeX is extraordinarily flexible and customizable in many dimensions. Users of TeX have several formats they can choose from: plain TeX, LaTeX, ConTeXt (pracjourn/2006-3/ hogg/), and so forth. Users have different major classes they can choose from: basic LaTeX, KOMA (pracjourn/2006-3/robbers/), memoir (pracjourn/2006-3/wilson/), AMS, and so forth. Typesetting all manner of languages is possible. There was great excitement at the recent PracTeX06 conference (pracjourn/2006-3/practex06/) about XeTeX's capability (along with the fontspec package from our editorial board member Will Robertson) to easily use any font in a Mac, Windows, or Linux font folder (including non-Latin fonts). TeX can be used any type of application as illustrated by various articles in this issue: creating a pocket-size book http://dw.tug.org/pracjourn/2006-3/editor/ (1 of 2)8/19/2006 6:08:38 AM The PracTeX Journal - TeX Users Group (pracjourn/2006-3/venugopal-pocketbook/), developing a letterhead or a laying out a small brochure (pracjourn/2006-3/hogg/), laying out a book (pracjourn/2006-3/walden/), or formatting crossword puzzles (pracjourn/2006-3/distract/). All this capability comes with lots of free documentation, e.g., pracjourn/2006-3/venugopal-review/. As usual, this issue of TPJ includes some other standard features: letters from readers (pracjourn/2006-3/ readers/), and Nelly's answers to questions (pracjourn/2006-3/asknelly/), and a PDF of the whole issue (pracjourn/2006-3/wholeissue/). Thanks Helping with reviewing and copy editing for this issue were Barbara Beeton, Karl Berry, Jon Breitenbucher, Lance Carnes, Peter Flom, David Ignat, Reinaldo Opus, John O'Rourke, Yuri Robbers, and Will Robertson (please forgive me if I have forgotten anyone). Especially notable is the work of Yuri Robbers who solicited two of the papers for this issue, edited one of them, led the writing of a third paper, and helped with production editing. Will Robertson (who also wrote a paper) and Lance Carnes (who was supposed to be taking a break) also did extensive production editing. Other members of our editorial board also commented on the content of this issue in various useful ways. Thank you to all of them and to the authors. Next issue Editor Lances Carnes states that next issue will include papers from the recent PracTeX06 conference, but will also be accepting other papers; so if you have something to say about the world of TeX, please write it down and send it to this journal. Page generated August 19, 2006 ; TUG home page; search; contact webmaster. http://dw.tug.org/pracjourn/2006-3/editor/ (2 of 2)8/19/2006 6:08:38 AM The PracTeX Journal - TeX Users Group Journal home page General information Submit an item Download style files Copyright Contact us Feedback From the Readers ● Comment on this paper ● Send submission idea to editor How does one join the TeX user group? [Please see tug.org/join.html for information and a link to the membership form. -Ed.] Dear editor, I am a beginner in using LaTeX to write a paper. Will you please give me an example of preparing a journal paper (double spaced, one column, 12pt, etc). Thanks a lot in advance! Regards, Haixia Zhang [Editor's note: Several members of our editorial board discussed this request. There were a few main thoughts: ● Many journals already have their own LaTeX style. Google on "LaTeX journal style" to find several examples. The first thing Haixia Zhang should do is ask if the journal he has in mind has an existing style file. ● Double-spaced is a style that was used with "traditional" typewritten submissions. The LaTeX journal styles that we know of don't use this. ● An interesting question worthy of a future TPJ journal article is how to maximize portability among http://dw.tug.org/pracjourn/2006-3/readers/ (1 of 4)8/19/2006 6:10:48 AM The PracTeX Journal - TeX Users Group journal styles as an author repeatedly submits his or her paper until a journal accepts it. If you would like to write an article on the subject of the last point above, please contact the editors at [email protected].] Dear Sir/Madam, I very much liked the article by Stephen Hartke on Free Math Fonts [in issue 2006-1 (tug.org/ pracjourn/2006-1/hartke/)]. It seems like almost all the fonts have only LaTeX support and not Plain TeX support. Would it be possible for those of us who prefer Plain TeX to prevail upon the font authors to make header files such that we Plain TeX-ies can use their Math Fonts too? This is even more necessary now that LaTeX has moved forward and offers limited support for LaTeX 2.09 and earlier. And an article by Michael Spivak in your journal showed that there are people who don't wish to use LaTeX, for whatever reasons. Sincerely yours, Jesse Deutsch [A response from Karl Berry: (1) Plain TeX has no standard macros for font support, so it is not entirely clear what to provide. (2) Font authors are almost certainly not going to be able to help address the writer's desire, as they are busy making fonts and many of them probably do not use plain TeX. However, they would probably welcome such a contribution. If there are certain font families of particular interest, please email [email protected] and we can see if a plain TeX volunteer can be found to work on it.] [Editor's note: the following note is in reference to the third Ask Nelly question in issue 2006-2 (tug. org/pracjourn/2006-2/asknelly/).] Dear Sir, I believe that the mdwlist package has options for suspending and resuming list environments. Maybe is worthwhile to mention it in your column. Yours sincerely, Rafael Pappalardo [Editor's note: the following notes is in reference to the article by D.V.L.K.D.P. Venugopal in issue 2006-2 (tug.org/pracjourn/2006-2/asknelly/).] Dear Sir, http://dw.tug.org/pracjourn/2006-3/readers/ (2 of 4)8/19/2006 6:10:48 AM The PracTeX Journal - TeX Users Group Very good. An excellent way to structure a lecture series. Sincerely, Keith Jones [Editor's note: we are unsure which article in issue 2006-2 the following note refers to. We tried to clarify it but without success. We guess it refers to the article by Hlavacek on Ipe (tug.org/ pracjourn/2006-2/hlavacek/).] Dear Sirs, This article really helped me out with the different image possibilities with LaTeX under MS Windows. But I still had problems finding a suitable MS Windows tool to incorporate .eps until I found and installed The Gimp for MS. It would be helpful if you could update section 5 of your paper by indicating that there is a version of The Gimp for Windows! Regards, Laurent Peckels Issue 2006-2 of The PracTeX Journal reprinted a an opinion piece from OSNews by Andy Roberts (tug. org/pracjourn/2006-2/roberts/), and the reprint included responses to the author after the piece's original publication.